1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lubricant-supplying apparatus for dry-wire drawing, and a method of supplying the lubricants that allows an easy supply of wire drawing lubricants during a process of dry-wire drawing for an aluminum-clad wire, so that the lubricants can be easily applied to the surface of a wire rod and the wire drawing can be easily performed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an aluminum-clad steel wire (AW) for power lines is provided in such a form that a steel wire has an aluminum cladding on its surface, whereby the steel wire inside of the aluminum-clad steel wire acts to increase the tensile strength of a wire rod and the aluminum cladding on the surface of the wire rod acts mainly as an electric conductor.
Several aluminum-clad steel wires are stranded, and then used for aerial cables, which are power lines for high voltage transmission.
Generally, according to a conventional method of producing AW, AW is produced through several stages of a wire-drawing process for obtaining a wire rod 5 having a desired diameter after applying aluminum cladding to the surface of a steel wire.
Among the wire drawings, dry-wire drawing, used for producing AW, is a method that uses powders comprising soap components not in a liquid state but in a solid state, and has been widely used for high-speed wire drawing.
Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional lubricant-agitating apparatus used for the dry-wire drawing comprises a lubricant container 10 for containing the lubricants and a conveying means 20, consisting of a pair of upper and lower rollers provided in the lubricant container 10, in which each of the rollers is formed on its outer surface with grooves to guide the wire rod 5.
Further, as an invention provided for enhancing the conventional lubricant-agitating apparatus, a roller-agitating apparatus, disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. (Hei) 08-215738, has rollers made of a magnetic material, each of which is formed on the outer surface thereof with a wire-rod guide-groove and a protrusion.
However, as shown in FIG. 2, the conventional lubricant-agitating apparatus has a problem in that when the wire rod 5 is drawn by a pressure die 30, deteriorated lubricants are unnecessarily accumulated around an inlet of a penetration hole 31a of the pressure die 30 through which the wire rod 4 is advanced, thereby wasting lubricants.
Furthermore, the deteriorated lubricants often flow backwards into the lubricant container 10, and the deteriorated lubricants having flowed backward are cooled into a lump-shaped solid 1 or cause a lubricant tunnel phenomenon by which the solidified lubricants form a lubricant tunnel 2, thereby preventing a smooth supply of the lubricants around an outer periphery of the wire rod 5.
Thus, in order to solve these problems, there has been used a lubricant-agitating apparatus formed with an opening for exhausting the deteriorated lubricants as disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Laid-open Publication No. (Hei) 2-59809 and Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. (Hei) 8-155531, a method disclosed in. Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. (Hei) 10-296322, or a lubricant-agitating apparatus provided with a power transmission apparatus as disclosed in Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 1995-0010988.
However, since the above lubricant agitating apparatuses have many components, many manufacturing processes are required, the lubricant agitating apparatus becomes complicated, and thus costs for the components are raised.